 |
|
|
 |
Page 2
| |
The Divas gave us a halfway-in-between kick, just like putting the 1/2 CTB on the
practicals upstairs, so the scenes wouldn't go entirely warm and yet the color contrast wouldn't be
too extreme. Additionally, where needed, we rigged the daylight-balanced 1x1 Litepanel or a Litepanel
Mini to cast a comparatively cold accent on a character.
|
|
 The half-and-half Divas let the
warmth of the practicals come through.
|
|
However, as the drama unfolds, the actors move to the darker, unfilled end of the
kitchen, and the uncorrected color—combined with the low exposure levels—goes almost
entirely (and appropriately) red.
Subsequent scenes have a cool, bluish tint; a calmer look. They happen in the wee hours of the morning
(shot day-for-night), or in the dawn's early light (shot dusk-for-dawn). The bluish tint helps to sell
day-for-night and simultaneously cools down the emotional energy of the presentation. These scenes were
shot under daylight illumination, with the cameras set to color temperatures of 3800K to 4600K depending
on the scene.]
Finally, with lighting and sound set, we roll, and some very intense interactions unfold before the
lenses. We're mostly done with the dinner sequences, and have survived a minor disaster with spilled
candle wax, when wrap time comes. Rob says it's officially time to knock off, but the cast and crew
have built up a nervous energy, and the scenes have momentum: we all say we should keep working.
Astonishing things happen, and the story takes some unexpected turns (all par for the course in Direct
Action Cinema), and finally, at 3AM, we have this critical sequence of scenes in the can (erm, on the
cards?). It's been a 12 hour day, but a worthwhile one; Rob says that by continuing on as we've done
we've "broken the back" of this film: the hardest part is now done.
Day 5 - After four days of scrambling to suss out what Rob wants and how he
wants it (it's the first time we've ever worked together), I'm ready to start behaving like a department
head (or at least ready to start faking it). We sit down with the revised shooting schedule, and I can
now read enough into the terse descriptions to actually plan how to schedule
the day's setups, based on sun angles, dramatic needs, and costume changes. This allows me to give the
crew a fairly good idea about the day's setups and what we'll need; suddenly we're working
ahead of the current setup, not just reacting to things as they occur.
Tim heads back up to Ethan's room with blackwrap to cover the windows, and we haul the VistaBeam in
again for a nighttime shot in broad daylight. We climb a hill to shoot day-for-night in a forest setting,
then have time to get some voiceovers recorded for the 13-minute shot from two days earlier, as well as
a couple of pickups. We look at the timestamps on previous days' clips in XDCAM EX Clip Browser to
figure out exactly when to shoot sunset-for-sunrise, and these shots go off without a hitch.
|
|
 Tim tests an Arri Pocket PAR
in a Chimera pancake lantern.
|
|
We have one final scene to shoot this day, a dusk-for-dawn setup at the same outdoor
bathtub seen in sunset shots. We wait for the sun to be safely down, then throw the VistaBeams on the
tub from the sunrise direction. It's not an entirely convincing illusion (for example, why isn't the
hillside behind the camera similarly lit?), but it's sufficiently different from the dusk scenes to
"read" as morning.
|
Dusk-for-dawn: VistaBeams give us morning-angled daylight.
|
Page
1
2
3
4
|
|
|
|
